How Did Caravaggio Light His Subjects?

Abstract

In recent years scholars have increasingly studied Caravaggio’s studio procedures, but no one to my knowledge has taken photographs of models with the purpose of demonstrating the light sources he used while painting. In their seventeenth-century biographies of the artist, Giovanni Pietro Bellori and Joachim von Sandrart both state that, while working in a darkened room, Caravaggio (1571–1610) illuminated his subjects with a single light source from above. Sandrart does not specify the type of illumination used by Caravaggio (he mentions “einiges kleines Liecht”—one small light), but in a highly influential translation of Bellori’s account, Howard Hibbard is more specific, referring to “lamps.” Bellori’s report reads as follows: “[Caravaggio] trovò una maniera di campirle [i.e., his models] entro l’aria bruna d’una camera rinchiusa,